In this study published in Cartilage, we show that mesenchimal stem cells can integrate with micronized cartilage matrix and undergo chondrogenic differentiation. However, thorough rehydration of the cartilage matrix prior to adding stem cells is critically important to maintain cell viability.

If you’re in the Sacramento area, I’ll be at the Science Cafe tonight from 6pm to 8pm to discuss the topic “Osteoarthritis – What is it? Can we prevent it?”.

The Science Cafe is an ongoing conversation about health science in the Sacramento Community, where Scientists share their research and perspectives, while addressing your questions.

The Sacramento Science Cafe is hosted by the Old Soul @ Forty Acres coffee house, on 3434 Broadway, Sacramento CA 95817. It is presented in collaboration with UC Davis Health, and Powerhouse Science Center.

Our lab had its second patent issued, to the Regents of the University of California. A few years ago, it became apparent that Cdk9 kinase activity controls the activation of primary response genes. We applied this knowledge to the context of post-traumatic arthritis. Scientifically this is very exciting because we can now better understand how joint injury leads to arthritis. We can now separate the effects of the purely mechanical damage on joint tissues, from the effects of the cellular responses. Once an injury happens, the mechanical damage has already occurred and can’t be undone. However, the injury causes cellular responses that begin within minutes, and continue for weeks. We can now start to dissect how these cellular responses can either benefit the long-term health of the joint, or promote arthritis progression.

We expect that this will have commercial potential. We discovered that preventing activation of primary response genes right after a joint injury greatly reduces arthritis severity in mice. There are so many joint injuries that occur every year, especially in younger athletic people. It is clear that many of these injured joints will become arthritic over time. Our research vision is to prevent arthritis even in injured joints. Today, most joint injuries do not get treated during the acute phase of the injury. This is especially true during the first 12-24 hours, or even the first week after the injury. We see this early time-frame as an opportunity for a therapeutic intervention to help reduce the chances of developing future arthritis.

The full text of U.S. patent 9,498,471 is here. Our manuscripts on this topic are published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, and European Cells & Materials. Links to these publications are on our Publications page here. We have a lot more in-vivo data, which will be published in more manuscripts soon…

The University of California has a generous patent policy, publicly available here. In our case, UC initially paid for the entire patent application process. If the patent generates revenue, UC will first recover the patent filing costs. After that, 35% of the net royalties and fees are paid to the inventors, and another 15% returns to the campus or laboratory to fund research. There is some interest from a pharmaceutical companies to license this patent from the University.

We had a great time at the ORS 2017 Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in San Diego! This year our group contributed quite a bit. Six abstracts summarize our current research and collaborative efforts. Our work focuses on two main areas: Growth Factors, and Post-Traumatic Osteoarthritis. We organized an early morning workshop on “Advances in Identifying Early OsteoArthritis”, and co-organized a Research Interest Group on “Growth Factors”. Thank you to all whose efforts contributed!